covert & 650B

Nothing concrete on the net... Has anyone tried it and can share the ride feel in general? asked TR about it? i have the 2012 model with the replaceable dropouts and it looks like theres plenty of room even when im wearing high volume fat schwalbe HD... and i know my 36 fox can host those wheels...

I love the covert and own a 29 SS rig and love that one also, never tried a 650b but all that hype that its the best of all worlds got me curious... it also seems like the industry is moving there (just a few days ago sc made a nice video funeral for the nomad while launching the bronson). kyle and kevin said on one video not so long ago that they cant find game changing advantages for 650b... but couple months later there are spy shots of what seems to be a 650b covert.

Nothing concrete on the net... Has anyone tried it and can share the ride feel in general? asked TR about it? i have the 2012 model with the replaceable dropouts and it looks like theres plenty of room even when im wearing high volume fat schwalbe HD... and i know my 36 fox can host those wheels...

I love the covert and own a 29 SS rig and love that one also, never tried a 650b but all that hype that its the best of all worlds got me curious... it also seems like the industry is moving there (just a few days ago sc made a nice video funeral for the nomad while launching the bronson). kyle and kevin said on one video not so long ago that they cant find game changing advantages for 650b... but couple months later there are spy shots of what seems to be a 650b covert.

I'm confused

I'm a self admitted 650B lover so any interesting 26" bike I see I'm always sizing it up for a conversion. At a ride last fall their was a shop with some bikes on display and they had a aluminum Covert in blue which was dam stunning I thought. To me it looked like a 650B will fit no problem in the back. I remember saying to myself this thing is just made for 650B wheels. Even the Lyric works with some 2.35" tires. Seat post contact at full bottom out would need to be checked. If you have over 12mm now you should be ok without shimming the shock.

Surprised no one has tried this and very surprised Transition hasn't made some drops to push the wheel back just a tad bit more. More likely a true 650B Covert is in the works now that so many companies have jumped on board.

You could commission some custom rear dropouts from a local machine shop if clearance is an issue. You could maybe even sell a handful of them if it works well. I guess that would screw up your rear brake caliper alignment, wouldn't it?

Interesting...i have heared this week that 650B dropouts are in the works... but Transition finally responded and their answer was short and clear more or less like this : we are sorry but you could not use 650B front or rear coz of clearance issues.

We are not making any conversion dropouts. We are not interested in making a "bandaid" 650 bike that was not actually designed with that wheel size in mind. There are two big problems with trying to convert the bike by dropouts alone.

1) The wheel radius is roughly 12-13mm larger, but the correct 650 fork is an additional 16.5mm taller A-C. You really need more than 12-13mm of offset to bring the BB height back to the correct position due to the higher front end. Once it is back to the correct position, the head angle (and worse) seat angle would be roughly 2 degrees slacker.

2) The brake position would be wrong. This is obviously a solvable problem with custom brake adapters, but we are not usually fond of proprietary parts.

An adapted bike using a wheel size it was not intended to run will never perform as well as it should, and I would strongly discourage conversions like this.

We are not making any conversion dropouts. We are not interested in making a "bandaid" 650 bike that was not actually designed with that wheel size in mind. There are two big problems with trying to convert the bike by dropouts alone.

1) The wheel radius is roughly 12-13mm larger, but the correct 650 fork is an additional 16.5mm taller A-C. You really need more than 12-13mm of offset to bring the BB height back to the correct position due to the higher front end. Once it is back to the correct position, the head angle (and worse) seat angle would be roughly 2 degrees slacker.

2) The brake position would be wrong. This is obviously a solvable problem with custom brake adapters, but we are not usually fond of proprietary parts.

An adapted bike using a wheel size it was not intended to run will never perform as well as it should, and I would strongly discourage conversions like this.